Nevada teen Carter Wilkerson has just become the creator of the most retweeted tweet ever, surpassing Ellen DeGeneres' record previously held for That Oscar Selfie.
What began as an attempt to wrangle free chicken nuggets from US fast-food chain Wendy's has not just turned into the most popular RT of all time, but also a PR fantasy that will keep digital marketing execs awake at night, salivating, for months.
Back in April, Wilkerson tweeted at Wendy's asking how many retweets he'd need to in order to receive a year's supply of chicken nuggets, gratis. Easy, someone at Wendy's replied: 18 million.
Both, of course, were attempting to game the good ol' social system – Wilkerson understanding that even if he didn't reach the goal, Wendy's would probably throw him something nice for his troubles, while Wendy's social media team hoovered up the publicity.
If nothing happened, neither lost anything. Then the whole nuggety business exploded.
The #nuggsforcarter campaign earned celebrity endorsements, hundreds of thousands of retweets, and began very quickly to approach Ellen's fabled record.
Indeed, with the writing on the wall, Ellen herself had the chicken-loving hero on her show just last month to celebrate his success.
Well, today Wilkerson passed that milestone, his plucky plea hitting 3,441,438 retweets at the time of writing. So does Carter get his nuggs, despite not actually hitting the original target set?
And not just free nuggs – and sauce, one Twitter user was keen to clarify – but $100,000 shall also be donated to the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption.
All's well that ends well.
